How Much Time Do You Spend Escaping Reality?

by James Wallace Harris, Monday, October 31, 2016

I often worry if I spend too much time escaping reality. Mostly I check out via television, books or daydreaming while listening to loud music. However, sometimes I just enjoy a sensual nap even when I’m not tired. I don’t allow myself drugs or alcohol, and my heart doesn’t allow mindless gluttony. I wonder why escapism wasn’t one of the original seven deadly sins? Or does sloth cover it?

Reality can be relentless. Sometimes we want to turn it off. What’s you’re preferred method? Some people have perfect lives. They love every moment of living. Other people need occasional breaks from reality. They want to take a few hours off and think about something different. Then, there are the sad souls, who need to completely abandon their wretched fates. From hobbies to heroin, how do you switch channels on reality?

I’m using the word reality in a specific way. It’s everything that’s outside of myself. I like to think of conscience beings as black boxes floating in an infinite objective reality. We exist in our box of subjectivity, gathering input through our senses, constructing a model of reality. Much like the Holodeck in the old Star Trek show. We never perceive reality directly, only by interacting with our model. Reality is too vast to actual grasp or perceive directly, but being realistic means working with an effective model. Escapism is when we consciously choose to ignore our inputs from the external reality and use our modeling mechanism to create fantasies. I’m never sure if escapist fantasies are how we wish reality was, or if we just prefer our substitute models of realities?

When I was growing up, I used science fiction to escape reality. My parents were alcoholics that should have divorced. Instead, they dragged my sister and I around the country hoping to find greener grass for themselves. I don’t blame them in the least, because I know they were just coping with reality the best way they could. Because of their alcohol abuse and my own experiments with drugs, I know about the paths of chemical escapism. But for this essay I’m not going to explore them. Those are negative forms of escapism. Are there positive forms of escapism? Is reading a great novel a positive form of escape? Or is it still an unhealthy negative way of dealing with reality?

Should we always face up to reality? Should we continuously keep our eyes focused on living in the now? When J. K. Rowling wrote her Harry Potter books was she escaping reality, or creating an artistic work of art for reality? Or a little bit of both? Happy people are often people who spend most of their time concentrating on being creative. Is building a house more reality based than writing a science fiction novel? Is a news junky living more realistically than someone who binges on The Walking Dead? Both spend endless hours watching TV.

Does watching TV always equal escapism? What about compulsive novel reading? Is taking a two-week Mediterranean cruise escaping reality or embracing it? Is sleep the body’s natural form of escapism, or a neutral state when we cease to exist in reality or subjectivity? We are taught by mindfulness instructors our thoughts get in the way. That idle brain chatter keeps us from seeing reality. They claim sitting quietly, ignoring our thoughts, but observing reality intently, is the best way to live in the now. Is that true? When is reading Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon a better choice?

Is living in the now, with a razor sharp focus on our inputs from reality more important than being creative?

Is living a binary condition – where we exist either interacting with reality or hiding from it? Aren’t our ambitions about how we wish to alter reality? Isn’t the desire to get rich, laid, or fed essentially wanting to alter reality? Think about that for a moment though. Picture yourself as an amoeba, swimming around looking for something to eat or mate (assuming amoebas mate). Our soul is programmed to interact with reality like any other creature in existence. Could escapism just be another bodily function? Could we be programmed to find food, shelter and mates, and when not doing either, just kill time?

Take virtual reality (VR) – which we’re told is the next big thing in entertainment. Could there be a more perfect form of escapism? Isn’t VR a rejection of reality? They should market it as AR – alternative realities. Who really wants to simulate actual reality? What people want are better realities to take their minds off the fact their bodies exist in a reality of growing threats.

If you start thinking about it, are most of the great forms of escapism based on alternative realities. Books, movies, comics, television, are all designed to move you mind out of reality into an artificial construction. Think of it as Noah Ark for your mind. You read a science fiction novel hoping when you finish reality will be more appealing, and you’ll want to get back to work.

Which reminds me of all those people who want to travel to other planets. Isn’t space travel the ultimate form of escape? Wasn’t the film Interstellar all about escape? Time to toss Earth in the trash heap and head someplace new. I’m a lifelong science fiction fan, but that philosophy seems ugly to me. If we can’t build a perfect civilization on a paradise planet, why think we could do better elsewhere?

Look at the explosion of heroin addiction, the expanding acceptance of legal marijuana, the endless stories of designer drugs, or just sit in your car outside a liquor store and watch the steady flow of customers. I suppose the folks who can’t find comfort in fiction turn to chemicals.

Of course, healthier people have work and hobbies, and rich folk have conspicuous consumption. People with talent have art, invention and science, Caring people have charities to keep their minds focused. But if you’re sick and poor, what do you have?

What’s amazing is the small number of people actually working on solving the world’s problems. Most people pick escapism instead. You’d think working on solving our problems would be an overwhelmingly attractive form of escapism. It could keep our minds busy for the rest of our lives. Of course, I still can’t get over the fact that 7 billion minds lack the imagination to turn this planet into heaven. Evidently, as a species we’re pretty bad at parallel processing – or cooperation.

It’s rather ironic that Iraq and Syria, once cradles of civilization, are now our best examples of civilization collapse? People over there are about as close to reality as it gets. Maybe the purpose of civilization is to provide security from external reality, so we have time to indulge in artificial realities. Work is essentially manipulating reality. Play can be enjoying reality, like swimming at the beach, but quite often play is indulging in artificial realities – television, movies, plays, books, games, sports.

Traditionally, work is a virtue, and play is a vice, or at best a short vacation from work. Western culture teaches that reality is something we conquer, and idleness is a sin. Is that still true? I’m retired, and don’t have to work anymore. Many people do think of retirees as a burden on society. A large segment of the working age population can’t get work. Maybe we need to make new ways to interact with reality, and consider them new virtues.

11 thoughts on “How Much Time Do You Spend Escaping Reality?”

I don’t spend any time escaping reality because I don’t do drugs, I imbibe only limited amounts of alcohol, and, I’m not schizophrenic. Reading or viewing DVDs or art or listening to music, for me anyway, is part of reality, a special part, but it’s still real.

Fred, I guess I inherited guilt in the form of the Protestant work ethic. Idle hands are the devils work thing. If I read a novel that makes me understand reality better, then I feel less guilty. If I read a novel or watch a TV show that has no value other than diversion, then I think of it as escapism. For example, Game of Thrones is pure escapism. Downton Abbey had historical value. Not much, but some.

Moderation is the key – I haven’t had a drink or used any illicit drugs in decades because I didn’t seem to be able to do it in moderation – lol. I still have escape techniques and some of them can be quite addictive in some sense. My screen time is absurd when you count reading and web-surfing and Facebook and so on. (I have 3 screens in front of me virtually all day long the Mac, an iPad and the TV. – I’m escaping boredom but I could certainly clean the kitchen or visit a friend. lol – (Thankfully, I’m not much of a shopper.)

I do cook and I go to the gym (NOT addictive) and I visit friends sometimes (boring). So I read compulsively and keep an eye on CNN. LOL – Sloth is definitely addictive.

Reality is often not much fun…science fiction is a very positive escape..so are old mystery novels…the world spins faster and faster these crazy dayz…fix some hot tea, make a tray of those little tea cakes, sit back and reread some Bradbury like Fahrenheit 451…then switch on a video screen and watch the remake of “Westworld.” Believe me u will feel loads better…also count yourself lucky u retired..a position for most of us that no longer exists…

Reality bites. Stumbling around in reality without a map means we get bitten a lot, and occasionally eaten. The mind builds that map of reality for you (if you live long enough) whether you become a professor of Philosophy, a high-voltage electrical worker, a farmer or a didgeridoo player in the Outback.

Whether or not that map expands to include other/lesser/greater “realities” depends on if you have time and energy to seek them out. Embracing a non-tactile alternate reality (in a safe portion of the biting reality) can turn into everything from death to a “Eureka!” moment in the conscious part of the mind. While I personally give death a low rating as an option based on my lack of experience, others may not.

Dreams have been associated with many of the things that can be described as “reality” and also with things I’ll call “non-tactile alternate realities” (because I’m lazy). Art, novels, music, inventions, TV and many items from your list can fall into that category. Biologists consider dreams to be organic, part of the brain’s processing of data inputs and important for health and wellness. Unless of course they are sent from R’lyeh.

Are our dreams part of the greater reality we live in? Maybe, is the best I can do with that. Is a really good story, one that makes you completely forget the body holding that book/TV remote and it’s associated “real” condition just in that body/mind? Probably. The interactive experience between you and the story is likely to be unique, although with similarities to others.

Personally, I’m going to go with the idea that our “map” is both the territory of reality as we perceive it, and all those other experiences we get from our non-tactile alternate realities. We’re it and it is us and everything we’ve ever done and known.

That way, I won’t feel too guilty about dodging work for a good book.

(and if the above stuff from my map trespasses on anyone’s toes, well gee I’m sorry about that. Move your foot next time.)

Let’s face it, reality can be pretty boring sometimes. There is no real need for me to be thoroughly in touch with reality on my daily train commute to work. I’ve seen all the stations, I’ve seen the sleepy fellow passengers. Reality can also be stressful. I think some escapism works to refresh yourself.